UK Online Marketing: Is Your Business Responsive to How It’s Changing?

Keyword strategies remain critical to search engine optimisation, which in turn remains essential to just about any successful commercial website. But to what extent is growing our obsession with visual content – photography, video, animation, infographics – changing the way we develop successful online marketing campaigns?

Say It with Images

With less time to capture the interest of those browsing online, communicating with graphics has become increasingly important. This has led Cisco to predict that by 2018 videos will account for 79% of all internet traffic. This isn’t just streaming movies. More retailers are providing videos of their products on their websites. Surveys have shown that customers report being more likely to purchase a product after they have watched a video.

Anyone active in social media has probably noticed the increase in visual content. Studies have shown that adding an image or video to a post dramatically increases the odds that it will be liked or shared. At the same time, most videos shared on Facebook are watched with the sound off. This indicates promoting your company, products, and services can’t rely on the audio component of videos.

In addition to the use of photographs and videos, infographics are becoming a key online communication tool. Infographics combine several key features that work well for online promotions. They can quickly convey information and are often better able to explain complex concepts in a way that people can easily understand. The visual appeal of infographics makes them far more likely to be liked and shared on social media shares than other types of written messages. Studies have also shown that people remember information far better when that information is accompanied by an image.

Obviously one key problem for companies who want to increase the visual appeal of their websites and improve view engagement is generating the content. Online sites have made it easier to purchase stock photographs for websites. Smartphones and editing apps have made it possible for companies to create videos without a large investment in equipment and software. The rising popularity of infographics has prompted an increase in the availability of the graphic components that can be combined with text to build attractive infographics. Compiling an infographic may still require time and effort but this process is no longer out of reach for the average small- or medium-sized company.

Online Marketing & SEO: Putting It All Together

One of the tricks to adding more image content on your website is to do so without hurting your search image ranking. Because images, videos, and infographic can’t be interpreted by search engine bots in the same way as written content, the only content information the bots will retrieve from your visual components will be the meta tags and alt text. This makes it critical to find a balance between your visual content for consumers and the text-based content necessary for SEO.

UK online marketing and smart SEO services need to continually evolve in response to developing forms of communication. By being sensitive to how the digital world and the way we respond to it is changing, businesses can take advantage of the enormous wealth of opportunity that these fast-shifting trends offer.